Xnview not bad, it doesn't burden the system and announce it's presence all over my files and desktop. I've been playing around with it and Photoscape most of the day, think i'll stick with these until outgrown.

Last edited by HopJack on Sun Aug 21, 2011 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not aware that GIMP is particularly bloated as software goes. (I don't know about the others.) I also don't really know how it compares to Photoshop. Photo editing is inherently a memory hog, and if you don't have much memory then any software you use will start using the page file/scratch disk/swap space. But of course, hard drive access is much slower than memory access. Moreover, once your editing software has used up your memory, other applications that want memory will also be forced to go to the hard drive instead. This is why your system slows down.

In Photoshop, you can choose how much memory you allow the software to use. For example, if I tell Photoshop to only use 50% of my memory at most, it will still go to the page file at that point (so Photoshop will slow to a crawl), but it will leave the remaining 50% of my memory for the system/other applications. I would imagine GIMP has a similar option. But the real solution is to get a computer with capable hardware if you're going to be doing a lot of photo editing.

Ok i've got a new computer that doesn't pee and moan when asked to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. So now i'm ready to click on either Adobe Photoshop/Premiere Elements 10 bundle full, or
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 full.

Well that was spot on advice, find myself going back and forth from Lightroom to Elements and would have lost interest from the start were it not for instructional videos. Though there is another program i still pull up that is very easy, basic but pretty good. Photoscape.

Question: is this in anyway degrading the final image by editing in multiple programs

Every editing step that changes data will contribute to a possible variation in data. Also be aware of the format you save in going between the programs. Use a lossless format, like psd or tif, and not a lossy one like jpeg.

Photoshop Lightroom and Elements are running on my modest Dell desktop- slow as a turtle. What can i add to speed up processing, more RAM memory? It's currently chugging along on 2GB. Or does it require something else to perform faster

If you are running a 32bit OS then you are limited to 4Gb of RAM, well 3.5Gb of usable RAM. It will make things run better than 2Gb but it won't be like a new computer, but you should notice an improvement. These days 2Gb of ram will cost next to nothing.

If you are lucky enough have lots of money, go for a new PC with an i7 processor, and as much RAM as you can throw at it along with a Solid State Drive as your 'C' drive, and a traditional HDD for storing all your photo's.

Bambi - Not all 32-bit systems are limited to 4GB of RAM. Linux with the PAE (Physical Address Extension) Kernel, can address up to 64GB of physical RAM. However, 32-bit addressing remains, so each virtual process in Proc is limited to 4GB apiece, though it can use 4GB 'blocks' in multiples.

The Linux current PAE kernel is a very easy install from the Distro's Repository, in a few clicks with the Synaptic (etc) installer. You then must reboot - a kernel change is one of the very rare things in Linux needing a reboot - installing / uninstalling multiple programs at once doesn't require rebooting.

I'm on a 3-months old PC, with Gigabyte GA-78LMT series board and 6-core AMD 2.8GHz CPU. So far has 8GB of DDR3, and 1 x 1TB SATA-2. I ran the Distro's (PCLOS - PCLinuxOS) default kernel initially, to get some data on performance. Then changed to the current PAE kernel.

For light-duties things, the difference isn't very noticeable - though when running even 6 light operations across 6 Desktops, the load now spreads more evenly across the cores - clearly visible in Gkrellm, the system functions indicator.

But with heavier loadings - video conversion with Avidemux, or Editing then Rendering with Kdenlive (like Vegas Pro) particularly on the Full HD 1920 x 1080 H264/MOV - either from my camera or the HD-TV 1440 x 1080 material, the difference is quite startling! About 45% faster.... And yes, I did have the data from pre-PAE to compare with... (Also, you can still reboot to the "old" kernel - just arrow-down at Boot Menu, and press Enter.)

Programs like Avidemux, Kdenlive, LiVES video editor, so on, have multi-threading options in Prefs - and that certainly helps load-spreading across the cores, too.

I usually use the Std HD with my camera - the 1280 x 720 - as that's slightly better quality H264/MOV (Fuji HS10 camera) - and an easier conversion to PAL 720 x 576 DVDs usable in TV-players. A lot of the TV here is in 1280 x 720, too, which for my purposes is convenient.

With the 1280 x 720 the PAE kernel improvement isn't as much as with the 1920 x 1080 - about 30-35%, which I call "a third" - and of course is much faster than the "lumpy" 1920 x 1080 overall.

Apparently Windows - XP, Vista, W7 - "could" use PAE kernels designed for those systems, to advantage, but the maker in its wisdom has chosen not to allow kernel changes at User/Desktop level. I'm told that NT-Servers do have optional PAE kernels, but can't confirm that - I've been out of the industry for some years. (I was a dealer level Windows tech and PC builder/repairer from Win-3.1, via the 9x years, to XP and start of Longhorn.)

Maybe with all the "new innovations" in Windows-8, one will be allowing PAE kernels - to be hoped, anyway...!